


the King's Mirror

by mariabumby



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Demon King! Oikawa, FHQ AU, Fantasy AU, M/M, attempts at poetry, fairytale AU, final haikyuu quest AU, happy with a little salty ending, i die with this ship, i dunno i wana twist my own heart, knight! iwaizumi, magical af, oh you bet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 06:03:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13001397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariabumby/pseuds/mariabumby
Summary: Oikawa is the god-king-god of mirrors, cursed to never see his own flesh. When he peers into the eyes of another, he sees but a floating void, a special kind of blindness.‘is something the matter?’The king feigns a small and gentle smile.





	the King's Mirror

Oikawa is the god-king-god of mirrors, cursed to never see his own flesh. When he peers into the eyes of another, he sees but a floating void, a special kind of blindness.

 

‘is something the matter?’

 

The king feigns a small and gentle smile.

 

‘nothing is’. He tilts his chin down. No one needs to know. You should know, a god-king-god of mirrors would be one to be clever.

 

The villager visibly bristles, flattered by such a kind answer. He looks down, not knowing what to do with himself now. He fidgets in place breifly before deciding to finally bow.

 

‘thankyou sire, if i may take my leave?’

Oikawa raises his hand from his throne, for an easy dismissal. Light, non-commital. He sees his hands do it, from his clean square nails, to the crisp end of his royal cuffs. His assistants have assured him while fixing his robes and liquid drapes, -while plaiting his auburn hair -that his face is nothing but perfect.

  
His hands drift to the base of his crown, rubbing it, as if it to check if it were really there. His gilted corona, a bright burst of sun and color.  
_He’s never actually seen it._  
He hasn’t seen his face in ages.  
He’s not sure if there’s much of a difference with becoming a god or becoming cursed.

 

  
——-

Since he made that deal at the fortnight, when saturn was at it’s peak and he drained blood from his arm in the pool where three springs brewed.

 

Curse the fae, the rocks, the trees and the damn sun. How were you supposed to find the Devil, when you were making a deal with it , it looked exactly like you.

 

_.. i do have devilish good looks .._

 

But on that moonless night, his reflection had goat horns and beady red eyes wielding a broken sword and waging an offer. What would be the spring of truth, be without the spring of love and the spring of wishes. Oikawa flung that night something better than a tiny coin. The stolen ceremonial dagger with several rings.

 

‘i want to be a deity.’

 

‘i want to know the power that creates worlds.’

 

‘i’ve spent my whole life honoring and studying the gods, looking for caverns and wormholes. there is no knowing you- but there are ways of becoming you. and that is all I ask.’

 

What was he then? Nothing but a faceless, priest. A man offered to the gods. Kannushi, sworn to nothingness, like the whiteness of the clothpaper uniform that hides their identity, their being, their faces.  
Maybe Oikawa wanted to just become somebody for once —  
Or maybe he really always wanted to be god.  
His negative reflection did nothing but grow into sly grin as if mirroring his innermost desires. It reached out for Oikawa almost jumping for his neck. The vision didn’t startle him, he knew what to expect.  
_Magic, horror, Change_.  
When the shadow’s hands returned into the water it was holding a rope like it was cradling a heavy necklace. A hang man’s rope. The kannushi, Oikawa, had to hold back a squeel from delight. This isn’t called the spring of immortality for nothing. A symbol of willful death was taken away from him. Deities do almost live forever. His eyes felt like they were on fire.

‘as you wish my lord’ and his shadow self bowed and disappeared.

 

Oikawa liked the sound of that.

 

And at that very night, they say a measly scholar walked into the palace gates and claimed the kingdom as his own. Transformed into an angel, a dragon, the king’s dead ancestors (sources differ at this point) , to prove he has the god’s blessing, heaven’s mandate.

 

The emperor, Oikawa Tooru, says this is but a metaphor the village gossip have invented to mythologize his sudden ascent.

  
He has _always_ been here he says.  
A rightful King, and you have been blessed.  
-

But it haunts him still, that accursed night, when he grasped the Corona, afixed it in his hair to behold himself King. He found no mirror he could look himself with. No amount of stabbing and pleading could he will a mirror to do his bidding. No magic and prayer could uncurse his eyes. He lost sight of himself.  
Pathetic, he mutters.  
Will he ever see himself king?

 

\---

 **fate**  
—

  
A lunar cycle later, there were rumors of Night’s Order arriving from mountain steppes. Flickering in and out of procession a solitary figure looming closer, as the days progres. It was a knight with a dark flag, on a horse . His steed had this blinding white hair, that almost etched its surroundings like a slow asteroid.

They weren’t supposed to exist.  
But Oikawa has been a man of books, and did not take lightly stories of Old.  
Moon, death, Curses. What was the difference？ He ordered that all flames in his palace be extinguished, windows opened, servants silent, as the air carried silence as loud as a clarion call.

 

The stone floors of his palace, felt heavy and cold.

 

Oikawa mustered all his patience he had to sit still in the darkened throne room. Nothing but moonlight, until a shot of shivers announced the presence of a kneeling man, fully present before his eyes.

A ghost, the ghost, the sad bad story you tell to children of silver men fetching the dead that was more than dead, but were cursed beyond belief.

  
The moon’s Haunting, it’s Will and breath.  
Harbringer of curses.

You weren’t supposed to look them in the eyes.

But what exactly were you supposed to do with them?

 

‘Greetings’ it said.

 

That’s fair.

“Hello” oikawa mustered, averting his gaze as non-committing as he can. An eerie stretch of silence.

“I am ...Iwaizumi Hajime.”  
The knight continues, a if awaiting for a longer response. Oikawa nods in acknowledgement, can he just, get to the haunting? The suspense felt like heavy acid in the King’s bones.  
“i was fated to kill my most precious lover.”  
And so the cursed fetch the accursed.  
“i’m sorry to hear that.”  
“I am bound to his dying wish.” The knight says plainly, as if both frustrated and exhausted.  
And oikawa can understand that, the mana released upon death is potent enough that wishes not two seconds long, can be life-binding. Is he cursed to help this man?  
  
  
“What was the dead guy’s wish?”

 

“For a broken sword to be made whole”. The knight was in silver armor, but his skin was darkened by sun, and his fleece and gloves were black. He held up a broken blade with no hilt, it almost looked half existent and weightless. It smelled like swampwater.

“It’s unfamiliar to me,” oikawa quips. The broken sword is old and damaged, but had a striking design. “can I see the hilt?”

Iwaizumi rose and presented the blade to Oikawa for closer examination. And immediately, OIkawa had to cup his mouth to stop from screaming. He saw himself in the blade. He saw his own pale face tortured, with bulging eyes and struggling against chains drowning in muddied waters- iwaizumi immediately resheaths the blade.

 

“Forgive me” the knight breathes.

 

Oikawa stares daggers into the knight’s eyes. Solid steady eyes, material, black and just as unyielding. He has an attractive set of brows, a shame a face that people would avoid to see. Oikawa braces himself for what consequences there are for looking into the eyes of a knight from Night’s Order, but absolutely nothing happens. His heart is still beating. Maybe Oikawa is cursed enough.

 

The knight grunts, looks down, maybe unaccustomed to being examined. He looks just as shocked from the King’s gaze, pale even. Like he’s seeing dead men walking, as if he hasn’t seen these in lifetimes, like maybe there was something so much worse about Oikawa, that could damn him further.

  
“What is that,” he gulps. “and how did you get it?” the emperor sounds whiny and petulant. all manners and fears disregarded cause he sees his reflection for once and he’s dying in it.  
“I am bound, to a dying man’s wish.” Iwaizumi intones, measured but equally as impatient with the explanation, “..he asked ...to make the sword whole.” Right, a knight from Night’s Order, judgement, Curses.

“Who exactly died my knight?” Oikawa dares.

 

Iwaizumi’s entire body tenses and the magic is leaking and shifting in the room. In no such other instance was the silence more deafening in chambers of the throne.

 

“Oikawa you idiot.” he breathes. “I’ve killed you with it.”

 

 

-———  
**When they were children**.  
——-

 

_They say a demon child festers in the temple._

  
A bastard from the king’s own court, a son of a slut, kneeling in the sanctuarium. The only reason they don’t kill it, is because it was pronounced to attract curses. And nothing unleashes the wrath of curses than a spiteful death. Just keep it in a church, it should hold him.  
_What goddamn specific gossip_.  
It helps no one by the way, that the kannushi are nameless and veiled. In almost identical white uniforms, with cloth masks that hang at all times, in front of their faces. Unhelpful, really, that their rituals include dances and swords. The king has replaced the mythic blades with wooden playthings. There will be no devil in his court, and the royal guard has more than doubled to match the kannushi. The priests wouldn’t dare change their garb or their namelessness. No matter how much they’re teased for looking like ghosts.  
_Heresay.._

 

—-

Iwaizumi Hajime, is the youngest to be included in the guard. Freshly cropped hair and a little bit of a rebel. Strong jaw, and a quick smile.  
And in his newly minted black uniform scours the temple grounds for a white figure, different from all others. His best friend. He pulls at the tail end of a veil, on this particular certain, priest wiping the west end of the sanctum floor. It hangs from a wide brimmed hat with small tinted beads, like a room in itself, closing off holy men from earth’s pleasures.

 

The young brown-eyed man behind the small curtain, makes a sour face, like eating bad candy.

‘Iwa-chan! you’re fingers are filthy-’

 

‘found you.’ the other teases. a mocking smile.

‘such. a BRUTE.’

 

The two exchange cheeky smiles, with the kannushi punching a fist over iwaizumi’s newly sown crest. Not just any royal guard. The emperor's guard himself, bloody impressive.

‘Congratulations on the promotion.’

 

‘I thought we should celebrate’ the other man quips.

 

Iwaizumi, lets himself in, the other’s small veiled room, head knocking on the other’s forehead to display his loot. In crispy red rice paper - milkbread, the spring offering for the gods. For the new king’s good fortune.

  
He was more than a little bit of a rebel.

‘Iwaizumi Hajime don’t you dare disrespect the gods.’ the kannushi says in one breath.

The soldier leans in to plant a kiss on his forehead.

 

‘But kami-sama.’ he whispers. ‘It’s for you’.

 

The brown haired man promptly erupts into a blush, as bright as the rice paper and pinches Iwaizumi’s wrist for the damn blasphemy. No calling mortals gods, and no stealing from gods either. His face betrays him though, as he has plastered on his face the most pleased and effused smile, complete with crinkled eyelids.

  
It’s a sight to behold, does Iwaizumi adore those honest eyes. .

‘God, pray do tell me thy name?’ the soldier almost whispers. Why must kannushi hide their faces? Why can’t you grace me with the music of your name? Why hide, when you’re all that I ever want to look at?

Oh but, Names hold incredible power, names are spell-binding and frankly dangerous things for these miracle men to keep.  
_You could be cursed with it._

 

‘It would have been Oikawa’ the kannushi thinks. Holding unto Iwaizumi’s wrist tighter. Just like the new king, don’t even think about it Oikawa. Your step father. His name that weighs and burns a thousand suns.

Oh sweet bastard from the king’s own court.

He squeezes his own eyes shut, stealing a kiss on Iwaizumi’s lips.

 

\----

 

And they say on the day of the coronation , the kannushi cast such a dense smoke of purification that one of their own was left choking into the floor. Magic peeling off of him in red licks in a state of desperation.

  
Oikawa Tooru, this one was once called though no one knew it. Slithering, shivering on the floor with cursed magic. He was unidentifiable like a cloud of cloth and pestilence, just this nameless disaster that threatened the king.  
And let it be said Oikawa Tooru fought for his life with his dying breath.  
  
And let it be known that Iwaizumi Hajime, took it.

 

 _The devil incarnate_!

The halls shouted, echoing in everyone’s mind, the curse unleashed.

  
—-  
You know.  
_Maybe we were all wretched from the start_.  
—-

  
Iwaizumi clutched at his dying lover, bleeding over, red anima, lurching from the bowels of his belly. Oikawa’s pupils swimmed aimlessly, in deep deep red.  
The Knight suddenly understood what it was like, to lose everything in one moment.  
Time stopped for him, and he did not care for the darkness spewing, the miasma spewing or his own life.  
  
It is no surprise that the Order of Night took Iwaizumi Hajime and that he left willingly with no goodbye.

Technically, Iwaizumi would have been hallucinating, may have been deluding himself into some insane red thread that could tie him back to his lover. when , he thinks, Oikawa muttered,

  
‘Please, my heart.’

‘Make this sword whole.’

The sword that just broke.  
The sword he just killed oikawa with.

  
As if that could reverse time my kami-sama.

Before he was swallowed by darkness.

 

———  
**when they rediscovered each other**.  
——

 

Ten leagues down, walking on the ocean floor lies times’ oldest forest. Made from the carcasses of ancient towering creatures that used to roam the deep; overgrown by kelp and unidentifiable alien-like trees. Two figures walk the half-ocean half-forest floor, awash in the din of insects and heady clouds of mists. It blots out the sun, a special kind of darkness.

 

The knight wrestles with the path as much with the new found information.

 

‘You’ve cheated Death, you’ve stolen the throne,’ he slashes effectively at the overgrown vines.

‘You don’t deny being the demon-’

 

‘God of Mirrors’ Oikawa quips, flicks hair from his face.

‘And I’m sorry your boss is mad’ Oikawa waves away branches with his hand.

 

“Death is not Night, you imbecile- ”

  
“not-exactly but a _function_ right-“

‘Oh But I think you’re more upset that I don’t remember you ~’ the emperor-mage-god-king sings along.

 

Iwaizumi stabs a bulging vine, feels relief at it’s bursts into odd guts. That isn’t even the beginning of his frustrations, he could feel his veins boil with adrenaline, and rumbling suspicion to this- this. What is this.

Oikawa’s gait comes to a stop. Eyes in a faroff stare into the broken blade sitting in his palm. His head snaps up and claims the directions of the springs where-he-talked-to-the-demon. as. ... this way.

 

Iwaizumi loses sight of him breifly, until Oikawa reemerges through a dense thicket of trees.

In beige robes, younger. Kannushi.  
kami.

‘What the actual fuck.”

In the distant left.

 

Iwaizumi in a plebe’s uniform scaling a tree. Oikawa yelling from beneath it.

Royal guard.

 

Visiting a shrine together, skipping stones in a river bank, festival lights,

  
Hajime.  
//  
green leaves turning into gold.

  
//  
Ghosts of memories, clinging to him like water looking for thirst.

//

Reverse.

 

\\\  
An old man praying, kneeling to the ground with a dense stick of incense.

  
\\\  
Pools of hot steam.  
\\\  
A river of bile, floating Dead eyes.

 

**A heady vivid loop of missed chances, sensation and circumstance. Like an infinite book of tree branches folding into itself. A flash of thunder.**

 

Iwaizumi yanks awake. Dates and space have blurred, how long have the two of them been journeying to the devil’s fountains? Oikawa is standing alone before a perfectly oval lake grasping a loosened rope. His clothes are tattered from long wear, his hair a mess.

 

_How long have they been wandering here?_

  
Which parts were the dream??

“You go down backwards” Oikawa says glancing over the shoulder. The wide sky feels blinding before him. Like it never existed until now, as if his skin never knew daylight and this was what being born actually felt like.  
The lake mirrored the sky like a blue heart.  
There was a journey here but it was blurred, Iwaizumi’s lips are dry and chapped. Oikawa seems self-assured, but paler and gaunt. The knight notices that for what forrest paths they’ve travelled, there was not a single tree in site. The beach is soft and white. The lake is in fact a liquid mirror.

  
A perfect portal.

 

  
Oikawa falls back first into the water, in the speed one would fall off a cliff. Iwaizumi doesn’t trust this, but his body moves almost on instinct following right after. He twists his body in the last moment.

 

———-  
**Backwards**.

————

 

‘Finally‘ he says ‘you’.

 

In the sky are two moons and a beady red eyed Oikawa clasping a hilt of a broken sword. The broken sword. He sits on a throne that is darker than black. Or darker than whatever color, the oppresiveness has steeped anything in it.

‘Sword of destiny’ the goat horned man jokes. “Really pointy, wow!”  
‘It could hurt someone you know?’

Iwaizumi motions towards it. The horned man stamps his foot, as if doubling gravity.  
Iwaizumi is plastered on the floor.

‘Oh- we match.’ the Other Oikawa taunts, with low eyelids. As if saying -how about that. The knight, takes account this version of Oikawa. Self-possessed - no that’s not it. Unhinged. Not wide eyed in panic lost in trails of forrest, but a looming and heavy Entity. Iwaizumi twists free, stabs the broken half of his sword on the other’s throat, in a blink, like lightning strike.

 

“Curse you.” he spits.

 

“too late. Family did that for me” Oikawa answers lamely. Grabs at Iwaizumi’s hand to drag the stab deeper. It feels real, the blood dripping, the face in perfect likeness, his lover, dying again. The twist is mirrored in Iwaizumi’s gut.

 

“I’m already unwanted, taught nothing but hatred and chains.” The brown circles in Oikawa’s eyes seem to consume Iwaizumi. Iwaizumi hates seeing this but can’t look away, can’t stop hoping—- “ S T O P F I N D I N G M E ” Iwaizumi feels the other half of the blade stab him and make the twist in his gut real.

Claws punch through the side of his spine, he’s choking in blood. At the same moment, he’s unchanged and unfazed. A Disreality, the smoke, the hiding. Iwaizumi’s face twists in relief.

  
A mirror god, of smoke and illusion. Great fear and desire.

“God, I missed you.”

 

Iwazumi with the full force of his will, lands a devastating punch into the other man’s face. And the world they were in, shatters.

 

\-----

 **  
Time inversed**.  
—

Oikawa lies unconscious on the banks of the three fountains. Wrists sliced, and face ghostly pale from the loss of blood, he’s high from magic water. He barely stirs, and when he does, he’s beyond groggy muscles limp and dysfunctional.

 

Iwaizumi emerges from the lake, moonless night, one, four seven rings? retrieved from the embankment. Ceremonial (whole) dagger fished from the bottom. Time inversed. Night’s cloak dark and naught foreboding.

 

The knight brings his damp hand above Oikawa’s lips. A faint breath. So the curse fetch the accursed. And Iwaizumi cups his hands unto his own breath, rubs it vigorously like prayer, pointless. Does anyone, truly know how to do anything here, or are we always running in circles?

Iwaizumi engulfs Oikawa into his arms. the kannushi, the emperor, the god-mirror-god, who just happened to own his heart. It breaks him to weep like this into the other’s shoulder. He feels emptied and nothingned as he grasps tighter in a dying body.

 

The eyes are the mirror to the soul.

 

Oikawa’s pupils only flutter for a moment, and lock into his. It exchanges eternities. Depths of pain and pleasures, paths and roads and turns of realities. Oikawa still accomplished the ritual of becoming a deity.  
But time hinged, and he looks different this time. He’s blind.  
A half divine- a daemon, with soft goat horns. A divider of destinies. Only as evil as you judge a cleaver, or an axe, that which destroys with their knowing, thy fortune, their prophecies.

 

The daemon who keeps timelines apart.  
The daemon, who keeps dead people dead.

“Hajime?” he lifts a hand to cup the face. His eyes wander, in True Blindness.

 

A ghost, the ghost, the sad bad story you tell to children of regretful silver men that dot Night’s sky. A cruel reality , how they’re cursed beyond belief.

 

“Yes?” he chokes in it.

 

“Enough with this longing.” Oikawa as a new daemon, is suddenly, unfairly wise. “we can’t keep cheating Time.” he breathes and grips his hand through Iwaizumi’s hair. A wretched kiss, the ones you have when you say goodbye.

  
The kind that says ‘I love you’, ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘thankyou’ all at one time.

 

Do not neglect your role, in this world. To be a white, mirror -ghost in the Night,

My eyes in Heaven, and vastness of Sky.

  
The ghost, like an apparition, disappeared at daybreak. Just as the moon disappears in the horizon.  
Who said he wasn’t still the king of mirrors? If he’s captured the moon’s heart?  
\--

 

 

 

And the moon rests, in phases. In rhythms and in patience. Taking divine moments to dissolve into blackness. Where it rests from it’s role as Night’s guardian, he haunts the kingdom to visit the blind.  
A blind-seer-King in particular, a daemon they call him. He seems to be half divine, half man. He claims to have kept the kingdoms from multiple ruin, from different timelines and dimensions. The people believe him, his prophecies are always near perfect. Deadly accurate when the moon is full. He was made blind, so his soul could see.

 

He has an enchanting handsome laugh.

It would bewitch you, this Daemon King.  
They claim he captured the love of the guardian moon itself, a faithful knight, Night's one true ghost.  
tsukiyo-mi: the moon, is longing.

**Author's Note:**

> YET ANOTHER TAKE, ME DOING FHQ ALL OVER AGAIN.
> 
> i love me my fantasy. this time featuring death, ghosts, demons and MORE DEATH! In oddly positive light. I didn't exactly put a chara death warning tag, because death here is portrayed as a purging and transformation, transition and only as evil as you make it out to be. 
> 
> This is, i think the closest i can come to my headcanons for the FHQ AU, where they can still be, for a moment, enemies, arguing, but be on the same side- and be this fun grey area of angst and forever. iunnno fam, leave a comment, this was hard to title


End file.
